Insomnia
by Fiaba
Summary: "His life is just too tied up in destiny for him to go to sea in a paper boat." Arthur/Morgana
1. Dream

**a/n: At first this was just a one-off, super-short drabble that wouldn't leave me alone until I posted it. Then it kind of grew another head and turned into a two-parter. Now it just keeps growing more heads. Still, I hope you enjoy. :)**

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><p><strong>I n s o m n i a<strong>

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><p><em>"And yet tonight she dreams of wooden swords and window ledges, of evergreens and snow in winter."<em>

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><p>She doesn't sleep at night these days. Nobody knows who she is at night because she becomes invisible, a shadow in the dark, so nobody knows that the harsh smudges around her eyes aren't just make-up willingly applied. She's never been good with night-time, because the night likes to be her tormentor. It keeps her awake with plaguing thoughts only ever drawn out in the blackness of the sightless night. She doesn't sleep at night these days. Not until she becomes so exhausted that she falls dead to the world, only kept asleep by the sheer overwhelming physical need for rest.<p>

Tonight is one such night.

She dreams of him sometimes. Not sometimes. Too often. She hates it, but she cannot keep her mind free of him when she does not have the rigid control of wakefulness. Her sleeping mind forgets that she hates him, forgets who she is now. Sometimes it's hard to keep the mask in place.. It's hard to keep pretending, keep crushing the shards of light inside her that insist on surviving, even though she's tried to incinerate them over and over so she doesn't have to _feel _it, feel the sickening twist of guilt and doubt and disgust at the sorry scattered ash she's made of her life.

All the beautiful things she ever had become dust, and the dust becomes darkness like a mire sucking at her being, dragging her into the suffocating depths of sin. She is, she thinks, what happens when the thorn-bush overruns the wild rose.

And yet tonight she dreams of wooden swords and window ledges, of evergreens and snow in winter. Just for now there're sips of wine and sweet music, and rustling silk on a polished dance floor, and there's a prince in red and gold who laughs like nothing can ever touch him, like arrows would bounce off him and swords would fall before they ever reached his delicate flesh. Just for now she's a princess, and her green blue eyes never flash bronze.

But then someone panics and the fragile cup falls from the royal table. Scarlet wine runs like blood across the stone floor and the cup lies broken alone.

She knows she won't sleep again tonight.


	2. Search

**a/n: aaaand... continuing the short insomniac drabble fest. Kudos for recognising the leitmotif. ;)**

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><p><strong>I n s o m n i a<strong>

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><p><em> "the eyes that pierce through his consciousness are never brown, but always sharp, glittering, <em>envy _green"_

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><p>He lies awake sometimes.<p>

Usually he falls into bed, so worn out he just sleeps like a log and snores peacefully until morning when Merlin wakes him up by hauling his curtains aside and infuriating him with bright, screaming sunshine.

Sometimes, though, it's not like that, and he remembers.

It's not that he likes thinking about her, but it's something he needs to do. At least, he knows it's not something he can cease to do. Somehow he can't shed her memory, because she's like a lingering spirit in the city, coming to him when the night lets her in. In the day he tries to bury her beneath a thousand and one royal duties, but even then somehow every paper he signs has her name inked all over it, invisible but so clear, like a wound carved into flesh.

She's not that easy to forget.

His mind wanders when he lies in his cool sheets, and when he's got nothing else to focus on it's less easy to guide his mind away from thoughts of her. He lies there and thinks, and wonders why it's not his pretty-but-so-_good_ fiancée he can't get out of his head, and why the eyes that pierce through his consciousness are never brown, but always sharp, glittering, _envy_ green.

He gets up and roams the castle when he can't sleep, because if he lies there he knows he'll just fall back into grief over the cruellest, sweetest traitor he's ever known. He doesn't expect to see anyone, and he's not paying much attention to where he walks, eyes downcast and a brooding frown in place. Her memory is strong tonight.

It's stupidly late and no-one should be up.

He rounds a corner, then _thump,_ he's colliding with something, and there's dark hair and a soft "oof" that makes his heart run a _thud_-_thud_ pattern he can't control. It's too dark, it's shadowy, he can't really see. There's only dark, dark hair and pale skin that catches the half-light in ethereal alabaster.

Robes on the floor and a cup of spilled wine, a dark stain on the white stone as if the ancient stonework itself bleeds. He stops, blinking, daring to believe, because he's tired and it's late and he _just _can't get her off his mind.

Eyes peer up at him through the gloom.

There's shattering pain when they're just dull grey without a hint of green.

Arthur knows he'll be up long before Merlin can flood his room with light, because Morgana's keeping him up tonight.


	3. Hide

**a/n: ****I'm not that pleased with this piece, but I thought I'd post it anyway. I was musing over where Morgana was seen sleeping in _The Sword in the Stone _and this was born. Not sure why parentheses seem to be cropping up so often these days.**

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><p><strong>I n s o m n i a<strong>

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><p><em>"she flings the door shut behind her as if she could lock away reality and reduce her world to nothing more than the contents of this room"<em>

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><p>Camelot is all wrong for her now, and sleep doesn't come easily.<p>

It feels so ominous to lie on her bed because it's not her bed anymore. This bed belongs to a dead woman; someone she packed away and destroyed years ago. The marks of who she used to be are everywhere, and the dusty mirror on the wall is only a cruel mockery forcing her to see the tainted porcelain of her own face, set with hate-dark eyes. For a second it's the ghost of that dead woman looking back, staring accusingly at her murderer.

It's enough to make Morgana tear the mirror from the wall and fling it with all her might, panting as the thousand silver shards fly like brittle daggers exploding over the stone.

This is a gilt-edged cage all dressed up in silk and velvet and she is a bird too used to freedom.

She runs, then, but of course it's _his_ room she finds herself running to, and she flings the door shut behind her as if she could lock away reality and reduce her world to nothing more than the contents of this room.

If she's being honest (there's no one here so why not?) this room is the only place she ever found solace at night. But that was years ago, and this is _now. _There's a feeling of _him_ in the air that's just so tangible it almost brings stinging tears to her eyes, though she swipes them away with cold irritation before they can betray her.

She tells herself she's long since tired of crying over him.

It's the fact that nothing's changed that makes her break. There're all his things, scattered and dropped because he never did learn to tidy up after himself. There's even a cloak, _his_ cloak, sprawled halfway off his bed (_excuse _her if she runs her fingers over it a little too long).

It's a strange normality to lie there and put her cheek on his pillow. It's not the first time, and Uther would have had a _fit_ if he knew just how old she was when she stopped coming to this room at night. But now it's all wrong because this is intimacy, and god knows she runs from that, and the memory of his blond head close to hers on the pillow is a ghost brushing the corners of her thoughts.

If she closes her eyes and shuts off her mind _just _enough, she can almost believe he's there with her, lying on his side so he can stare at her when he thinks she's not looking. She's so desperate for the comfort his name _still _carries for her, and when the door suddenly whirls open noisily (he was never good at regal entrances) there's a split second when she thinks it might just be him.

But it's just a servant with a hapless face and she hurls a vase at him in a rage, watching as yet more broken fragments cascade and clatter. The stupid boy flees, and she curls up alone.

But at least here she sleeps with _his_ scent like a spell warding off the demons for a fragile moment.


	4. Burn

**a/n: These are getting longer, and also show signs of developing some kind of plot in the future. Hmm.**

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><p><strong>I n s o m n i a<strong>

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><p><em>"They're a prince and a princess and they're a lullaby, but it's just the calm before the storm"<em>

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><p>It's summer, and Arthur is burning with a fever that just won't break.<p>

They're at war and people are dying and there's blood instead of rain wetting the scorched earth. It's so far from home and Merlin's by his side, but he can't do more than press cool cloth to Arthur's feverish brow. Everyone is subdued, melancholic, just hoping the King will rise again.

The rich red tent is small and the summer air is stifling, sweating, overbearing. It's a bad time for war and Arthur didn't want it, but it can't be helped, and the men fight on in the battlefield. They're brave, but then they're always brave, so valiantly bearing the Pendragon banner in the name of Camelot and all that they hold dear. For Arthur they'd fight forever in this foreign land.

There's a tang of salt and war and drought in the air and a strange semi-awareness sets in like a thick, muggy cloud, distorting the scarlet drapes and sketching violent, blurry shapes across Arthur's vision. The blue of his eyes is unfocused, like water under a pane of cloudy ice, and he is hardly aware of reality. His mind is not his own, and he can remember little of where he is.

He finds it odd that all he can recognise now are fragments; just little shards of the most deeply embedded memories that never fade away, resurfacing now that fever has stripped away the layers and layers of _life_ that have built up in between.

It's like a summer's day in childhood when it's just too hot to fall asleep, and when he knows he'll stay awake all night just talking, whispering secrets, holding hands (wasn't it easy when he could do that whenever he liked?).

But here the secrets are a distant light, part of another world where steel doesn't ring on steel. At last sleep takes him but it's more like delirium, and all he sees are indigo gowns and willow trees. She's there with him and it's summer, and they're in the long grass where nobody can tie them down. It's childhood and it's all promises they're sure they'll keep; it's _Morgana, I'll marry you because you like wrestling too_, and he thinks dreams are a cruel kind of magic for making him remember.

They're a prince and a princess and they're a lullaby, but it's just the calm before the storm.

He wakes again in the middle of the night and her name is on his lips like a plea or a curse, but with her there's never been much difference between the two, and he almost weeps for the cruel, cruel twists of fate that leave him this way.

Merlin hurries to his side and pretends not to recognise the anguished sound that falls from his mouth (was _Morgana _always such a terrible, beautiful word?) just so he'll still be able to look Gwen in the eye, because he knows it's not her face Arthur's seeing now.

But it's nobody's fault the lullaby always ends in tears.


	5. Meet

**a/n: Well look at that! Arthur and Morgana actually made it into the same scene! 'bout time, I'd say.**

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><p><strong>I n s o m n i a<strong>

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><p><em>"Go home. We'll pretend this never happened."<em>

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><p>It's strange that they have the same idea tonight. Neither of them can sleep and they're each too full of the other to lie still and rest. It's as if they're being reeled in on the same thread, like two birds on the same breath of wind.<p>

They meet by chance in the dark of the forest and it's just too _too _late in the night for swords and spells. They lock eyes and he just wants to say _please, please just be the girl I loved, _but he can't because they've crossed too many lines for that, so instead he stutters "Morgana," and she looks at him like a wild hare who doesn't know whether or not to flee.

"What are you doing here?" she asks, almost dully because she's tired, and so worn out from running in circles that she can't summon the energy to want to kill him.

He looks like he doesn't know what to say, but why should he know when they've only exchanged words that say _I hate you _for years? He starts forwards and she recoils, wary in the darkness, so he stops and sighs.

"I couldn't sleep," he admits, hollowly, and it might as well be ten years ago when they wandered the castle at night together, unafraid of the darkness because they had each other. She's silent for a moment, trying to muster up the bitterness to speak cruelly to him, but all she manages is a half-hearted sardonic jibe.

"What, Guinevere not warming your bed properly?" she mocks, but it just sounds _sad_, so she gives up and sighs, taking a few steps closer to him. "Neither could I," she finally says, and looks him in the eye. He ignores the insult and it strikes him that he's not been this close to her for _years_, not properly, and the colour of her eyes (a stolen shade of the sea) makes him smile.

"I miss you." He says, almost petulant. She looks at him, startled, and bites her lip. They aren't meant to do this anymore, aren't meant to _care_, but it's just so _late _that what's the point in pretending?

_And I you_, she almost says, but the words die in her throat because it's just _too much, _it's just too close to the edge of a precipice she'd die falling from, and her eyes flicker shut. "You shouldn't be out here. Dangerous things live in this forest, Arthur Pendragon."

"Like you?"

"It might be late, but don't think it's going to be that easy to find out where I live," she says, a touch of amusement in her voice. She almost smiles at him but it's just too _wrong_, so she looks away into the blackness and it's like a shutter falling over her face. She glances back at him and when she speaks her tone is crisp again as she re-finds the mocking voice which forms her barbed shield.

"Go home. We'll pretend this never happened."

She turns, ready to leave, but Arthur's hand flies up and catches her wrist. She whirls around, fury surfacing like a reflex in sea-green eyes which threaten to glow gold. She's about to strike, and she opens her mouth to hiss at him, but before she can utter a word he's pulled her against him in an embrace, solid and warm to her brittle and cold.

She's so shocked she doesn't know what to do and her arms are trapped awkwardly against his chest, but it's the most overwhelming, terrifying thing to be in his arms again. It's as if someone has simply pulled out the ground from underneath her and stuck it up overhead where the sky ought to be, and she reels from the contact, contact she's deprived herself of for so long. Yet her struggle is brief and she soon falls still, and he holds her, strokes her hair, once, then lets her go.

He gets one last look of anguished ocean eyes before she's melted into the night.


	6. Regret

**a/n: I'm not entirely sure where this story is going. It was never really meant to be a cohesive story from beginning to end, but it's _kind _of developing a plot, or at least some kind of progressive development in their relationship as opposed to being standalone short stories. Still, on with the show~**

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><p><strong>I n s o m n i a<strong>

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><p><em>"It would be much easier to just love you"<br>_

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><p>It doesn't even matter what happens in the day anymore. Somehow they both just accept that they play by different rules when the night's fallen and neither of them can sleep. After that first meeting in the dark they did it again, and then again, and now it's getting almost normal for them to meet against the black sky. Yet neither of them is willing to put words to their twisted, <em>twisted <em>situation, or speak aloud the questions which it raises. They don't want to talk about what it is they're doing, playing this absurd game of night-time friendship in the face of their daylight fury, because at the heart of it they don't want it to stop.

They are each other's comfort when the rest of the world isn't looking.

They stay as cruel as ever when the sun's up. They fight, they argue, they rage, they destroy (they were born to want each other's blood, after all), but it's like they leave all that in their lonely homes and empty beds when they slip out into the night air.

Sometimes they speak, but often they say little. It's like they're obeying some deep-driven need to just be _close _to one another, even though their minds know it's beyond foolish to comply. They know they're walking back and forth over the line between safe and _stupid stupid stupid_, but they've been doing that for so long anyway that it hardly seems worth the thought.

He tells her he misses her often, but she never seems to find the words to say it back. She just smiles at him, bleakly, despairingly, because she's got chains around her soul which tie her to a destiny she never wanted, and that destiny is one which excludes him (it's just too bad destiny never factored in her _heart_)_. _

"We were good together once," she comments tonight, as they walk slowly through a forest, going in circles but paying it no mind. He looks at her, lingeringly, guardedly, and shoves his hands in his pockets like a stubborn young boy.

"Mmhm." He replies, because he can't think of anything more astute to say. She smiles then, because even without looking she can picture that face he makes when he's at a loss for words, just frowning slightly and put out because he doesn't like not being the one with all the things to say.

"In another lifetime it would've stayed that way," she remarks darkly, kicking at a stone that dares to cross her path.

"It could still be like that," he adds, quietly, knowing it's a dangerous thing to say because she hates to be reminded that maybe, just maybe, she _did _have a choice and all this is her own doing (does she just call it destiny because it's easy?), but she doesn't say anything, just stares out into the distance.

"You don't know how much I wish that were true sometimes," she replies in the end. "It would be much easier to just love you."

"Can't you?"

There's a pause, heavy, and she seems to be fighting with herself, words warring on her tongue as she looks at him with anxious green eyes. At last she speaks, quietly, almost hoping he won't hear the fateful things she wants to say. "I already _do_, but it's… it's not enough."

"Not enough for you," he says bitterly, and she sighs beside him. They've turned a full circle and come back to the walls of Camelot, and both of them know it's time to say goodbye. Dawn's not far off and they _can't_ be together when the sun comes up, because they both know the day burns away the strange peace between them like a hound hunting a doe, and they can't risk being there when it's caught. In the day they don't have the darkness to hide behind and the spell wears off.

"Not enough to keep destiny away," she says flatly, turning to face him straight on. She touches his cheek, outlining the stubborn jaw and the grim, hard mouth, stroking until it softens and he reaches out to pull her close. She doesn't fight his touch anymore and lets him hold her, just for a second (he always was her moment of weakness), and feels him sigh.

Then the sun comes up and they must go to war.


	7. Stay I

**a/b: A bit of a dreary short one that doesn't do much, but it _is _kind of a two-parter with the next instalment. Read on, fair reader!**

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><p><strong>I n s o m n i a<strong>

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><p>Agravaine's dead and she doesn't spare him much of a thought. Helios too, but she never really cared. Just broken puppets on broken strings, tossed aside, and they aren't what keep her awake.<p>

She does feel alone now in the bleak forest with no one left, though, because everyone's dead and she almost wishes she could join them. There's silence in her hut and the torches are out, but it's a full moon and a white, white glow is the last light left. Eventually she tires of sitting at her lonely table in the silence and she goes out in the darkness, just one more shadow against an endless night.

The moon's too bright for sleeping tonight.

It's all but soundless out there and the air is cool, but restless, almost, as if the rain that's fallen is trying to reach catharsis after a storm. Wind catches her hair and she shivers, eyes darting left and right. She doesn't have to be scared because she's powerful beyond anything that waits out there, but she feels the fear creep in anyway. She's good at hiding her emotions but she never could stop _feeling _them.

If there's one thing she can't get off her mind it's that look Arthur turns on her sometimes when he forgets to hide it. It's such a raw look, like he's staring her soul in the eye, if souls can do that, and it feels like fire and ice meeting because he's just so warm and beautiful and _golden_ while she's grown so cold and frozen. Sometimes she thinks there's a sheet of perfect crystal ice encasing the love she used to have.

She kind of misses love.

It's not that she doesn't love him. She does. Deep down she thinks she always will, because God knows she could never extinguish the simmering feeling she's always had for him (she'd laugh, if it weren't such a tragedy). It's always there, that deep connection to him, no matter how much she swears she hates him. She's got control over everything, the fire, the earth and the rain, yet she, the great High Priestess she's become, she can't even get one wretched princeling out of her head.

It's laughable, really, what they're doing. They're just _hypocrites _(and isn't everyone?)_, _because they act like friends, act like _lovers _in the night, and then when they wake up in the morning they're just enemies to the bitter end all over again, and they _hurt_ each other, only to soothe those same wounds with whispered words and wistful caresses at nightfall.

None of that matters because he's not hers anyway.

He loves someone else, and that's just fine (a lie of course, but she tells herself it's not) because Gwen's his future and his safe choice and she's the one who's supposed to walk into the sunset with him like some pretty fairy tale. It's only when night falls, absolute night, that Arthur strays.

She doesn't expect him tonight, of course. She shouldn't expect him any night, but it's not her fault she's got no control over hope (it's always elusive when she wants it). But she knows tonight she's going to sit against the old oak tree and stare into the forest alone, because Arthur's not coming tonight. Arthur mustn't come tonight.

It is his wedding night after all.


	8. Stay II

**a/n: ****In case I forgot to say it, I hereby disclaim _Merlin_. :) And thank you to all readers/reviewers who stick with this (confused/strange/plotless) story. It means a lot to me to hear from you. **

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><p><strong>I n s o m n i a<strong>

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><p>"<em>his life is just too tied up in destiny for him to go to sea in a paper boat"<em>

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><p>He's a married man now and he's got a wife in his bed.<p>

He's kept his night-time wanderings a secret from her, and it makes him feel guilty but he knows she'll just worry if she realises. And she'd never understand. She wouldn't be able to make sense of the complex _mess _his relationship with Morgana is. And she'd try to stop him, or she'd tell Merlin and Merlin would look at him with reproving eyes, warning him off his beautiful downfall.

He just knows he can't stop.

But tonight Gwen's here and he doesn't dare venture into the darkness, and he's _not _worried about hurting Morgana's feelings (she doesn't have those, remember?) by not coming. He just can't go when Gwen's asleep with her curls on the pillow and her _eternally _honest face even more wide open when she's sleeping. He looks at her and it's a dear face, a good face, but sometimes he wishes there would just be some kind of intrigue there, something that _stirs _him, yet all he sees is sweet, devoted, _true_.

He thinks it's a strange kind of masochism that sometimes he wants Gwen to just _lie_ to him, to create some kind of up-and-down that means at least it's _real_. Sometimes he wants to be furious with her just so he can feel the rush of falling back in love, but when does Gwen ever do anything that's not right and _good? _(The woman's almost a saint, but he's never been very holy). He's got no right to rage in the face of her honest smiles, and so they sail along in a perfect straight line, skimming on flat, numb water that never so much as ripples its silent, silent surface.

And if Gwen is his endless still water then he knows who is his blazing stormy sea. _Morgana _is dangerous, off-limits, wild, untamed. He can no more trust her than he can a paper boat in a hurricane, but he thinks that's what makes her so impossible to forget. She's all the things Gwen is not, and he knows that's why he married his docile sweetheart and not her (it's the rightdecision, it _is)_, because Gwen is safe and Gwen won't let him down, and his life is just too tied up in destiny for him to go to sea in a paper boat.

But he knows Gwen's right there and he shouldn't be thinking about silky dark hair down smooth alabaster skin, and secretive smiles hiding dangerous lies. He can't sleep, even though it's late, and he's got things sitting on his mind like a solid lead weight. He shouldn't be thinking about her now, but there's always this window of weakness, this insomnia that means she can glide straight into his mind and hold him, torment him, never release him.

He tries to forget and touches the bouncy curls on Gwen's pillow (it's not her fault they'll never be like midnight silk). A gripping agitation seizes him and he turns away, heels of his hands pressed to his eyes as if to force laughing green eyes out of his mind. He can stay no longer with the whispering voices, and he drags on boots and throws on a shirt, tossing away his scruples like dust in the wind.

The night air is cold, but blessed relief. It's strange how he doesn't often realise how suffocating the citadel is, but the freedom of the darkness and the crisp wind on his face point out just how much he carries on his shoulders. He smiles, and then he's walking away into the haze of the forest and, just as he knew she would, she finds him like a moth to a flame.

"I didn't think you'd come." She murmurs, but her arms go around his neck and her cheek against his shoulder. He holds her, guilt a far-off friend whose grip is slackening, and he sighs his apology against her (midnight silk) hair.

It's painful but the wife in his bed is nothing to this ghost inside his head.


End file.
